Gaza,(Alresalah.ps)--The UN has criticized Israeli violence against Palestinian children, urging the international community to scale up its protective measures for minors living under Israeli occupation.
Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said on Thursday that ''settlers' violence and vandalism and night time raids and detentions by Israeli occupation forces, house demolitions, threatened expulsions, and a host of other practices'', have deprived Palestinian children of safety and a sense of security.
He also said that long-term Israeli occupation has alarming effects on children's health and well-being.
''Prolonged occupation deforms the development of children through pervasive deprivations affecting health, education, and overall security,'' Falk told the General Assembly's human rights committee.
In his report, Falk also expressed extreme concerns about the violence against Palestinian children arrested by Israeli military, urging Tel Aviv to adopt guidelines in line with humanitarian law for the detained children.
''The arrest procedures documented by UN agencies and reliable human rights organizations include arrests in the middle of the night, removal of child from parents for questioning, abusive treatment at detention and conviction procedures that appear to preclude findings of not guilty," he said.
Falk described an incident in which a three-year old girl was forced out of her home at 3 a.m. and threatened at gunpoint to reveal her brother's whereabouts.
''She was told she would be shot and her family home destroyed unless she revealed the whereabouts of her brother,'' said Falk, adding that ''and now, her mother explained, she can't sleep through the night and bedwets.
According to Falk, the number of the Palestinian children arrested and prosecuted by Israeli authorities has risen in the past four years and most them were arrested over allegations of stone-throwing at Jewish settlers or Israeli soldiers.
He also criticized Israeli authorities for their failure to prevent and punish settler violence against Palestinian children, stressing that many Palestinian kids have stopped attending school because of frequent settler harassment.
The UN investigator for the Palestinian territories also touched on the situation of Palestinian children living in the Gaza Strip.
Falk said in Gaza, children are affected by ''traumatizing periodic violent incursions and sonic booms resulting from over-flights, as well as the still unrepaired destruction of refugee camps, residential communities, and public buildings by Israeli forces.
There was no immediate response from Israel to Falk's report.
0 comments:
Post a Comment